Last week was an exciting one for children’s health. After a harrowing few months of uncertainty over the fate of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) — the very important federal children’s health insurance program which covers about 9 million children nationwide — Congress agreed to reauthorize CHIP for another six years. You can read about this fantastic news here at NPR.

We will continue to monitor this big news to examine more closely what this means for children’s health and access in the immediate future. The past few months should have taught us that we should not take the program for granted. After all, the fact that CHIP — an “uncontroversial” program throughout its 20-year history — faced such an existential crisis is an indication of our current political climate. According to NPR, CHIP, which needs to be renewed every few years, was historically a bipartisan priority that legislators worked to renew far in advance. Researchers are still working on finding the impacts of children’s enrollment rates with CHIP within these months of uncertainty.

Some analysts say that extending CHIP for 10 years instead of six would save the federal government much more money, but this deal is still a solid one. Also, one analyst suggested that the national anxiety over CHIP might have brought more attention to it in the long run. More people can now be aware of the program and what it does (and possibly be encouraged to enroll), and more people can communicate to lawmakers about the importance of keeping the program alive. States can also start brainstorming safeguards for future use, just in case we are faced with a similar situation in the future. The role of states is especially important since CHIP is based on an architecture of shared responsibility between the states and the federal government.

CHIP is the sort of program that we may not have heard enough about if not for events such as the most recent budget crisis. It is, however, a very important source of health insurance for many American children. On his show, host Jimmy Kimmel explains a bit more about CHIL and its significance to his family. As we celebrate the most recent news, we should look ahead and start planning for CHIP’s future, so that we don’t repeat history.